My title, “Chasing the Tail of Providence,” is a phrase which has emerged in the past few years as my best touchstone for work with students and with NetVUE member schools in guiding the process of vocational discernment and exploration. It has become a reminder for me of what we are doing, and especially what we are not doing, in educating our students through the lens of vocation.

The phrase is a reminder that we engage with the deep mystery of immanently present transcendence in our work, and that as soon as we name “calling” as our project with students, we connect our efforts with the lofty heritage of Abraham, of Jeremiah, of Paul, of Muhammad, of Ignatius, of Martin Luther King Jr., just to name a few. This is a heritage in which callings would barely be touched by career counseling or personality inventories, but rather where calling means a deeply relational connection with providence, going far beyond knowledge–lived, in fact, much more than known. We claim an engagement with a larger wisdom, a wider pattern, and a deeper grace when we call what we do with our students “the intellectual and theological exploration of vocation” (NetVUE’s stated mission is to foster this). And yet, it is our great honor boldly to wrestle with the mystery of calling with those students under our care.

Whether it’s one-on-one conversation with a student (an irreplaceable setting for vocational reflection, though it runs a bulldozer through our weekly appointment calendars) or whether it’s designing a campus-wide initiative for helping an entire academic community better engage questions of calling, it’s important to remember both the promise and the limit of our enterprise. Continue reading →